abandonware games sorted by popularity

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to sit in a metal tube underwater while depth charges rain from above, Das Boot: German U-Boat Simulation has you covered. Releas...

Vixen is an action game built around a rather unusual combination of fantasy, combat, and transformation. The player takes control of a heroine capable of using magical abilities w...

If the first game was controlled chaos, Earthworm Jim 2 is joyful anarchy. It cranks up the weirdness, throwing genre shifts and unexpected mechanics at the player with gleeful aba...

Forget muscle cars and highways—Detroit (1994) is all about running your own automobile empire. Starting in the early 20th century, you’ll design cars, juggle productio...

Imagine Tetris went on a sugar binge and had an identity crisis. That’s Zyconix (1992, DOS) in a nutshell. It’s a tile-matching puzzle game where nothing quite behaves ...

Magic Carpet 2: The Netherworlds expands everything that made its predecessor memorable, delivering larger worlds, sharper visuals, and even more opportunities to unleash spectacul...

ShadowForce (1994, DOS) is what happens when someone decides subtlety is overrated and replaces it with explosions. This tactical action romp drops you into a near-future mess of m...

Mystery of the Mummy combines classic adventure gaming with ancient Egyptian mysteries, inviting players to explore a world of tombs, secrets, and puzzles that have presumably been...

Pac PC is a 1995 DOS arcade game that proudly carries the torch of maze-running entertainment into the mid-1990s. Players guide their hungry hero through winding levels filled with...

Released in 1988, Journey to the Center of the Earth draws inspiration from Jules Verne's famous novel and invites players into a subterranean world filled with mysteries and dange...

In Jimmy Connors Pro Tennis Tour, tennis is stripped down to its essentials: a racket, a ball, and the growing suspicion that your opponent has somehow mastered the laws of physics...

Ardentryst is the indie platformer that tried really hard to be a Metroidvania and kinda pulled it off. With anime-style art, RPG elements, and two playable characters, it’s ...

If you've ever wanted to pop bubbles while being taunted by adorable dinosaurs, Bust-A-Move Again (1996, DOS) is your jam. It’s like Tetris met a bubble tea menu and had a hy...

American Conquest is the kind of game that throws hundreds of little soldiers at you and says, "Good luck, General!" Set during the early colonization of the Americas, this RTS ble...

Novell DOS 7 is an alternative DOS operating system that arrived during the later years of the DOS era, offering compatibility with conventional DOS software while adding a collect...

Harley-Davidson: The Road to Sturgis is less about racing and more about the journey, which sounds poetic until you realize the road can be quite unforgiving. You ride across the U...

The Lost Treasures of Infocom is essentially a library of interactive fiction for players willing to trade spectacular graphics for spectacularly active imaginations. The collectio...

Zangband is a variant of the popular roguelike game Angband. Zangband, short for Zelazny Angband, was developed by Chris Weisiger and first released in 1994. The game features...

Fidelity Chessmaster 2100, released in 1989 for DOS, is chess with a very clear mission: beat you, patiently and without mercy. At the time, it was a serious achievement in compute...

Released in the mid-’80s, Earthly delights is an odd, almost poetic little DOS title that feels more like an experiment than a traditional game. It blends abstract visuals wi...

Duck Hunt is a faithful remake based on the original light gun game Duck Hunt published by Nintendo in 1984. Duck Hunt was a shooting gallery game with a straightforward ...

FlixMix feels like someone took a film editor’s desk, scattered it across a computer screen, and invited you to tidy up at speed. The premise is deceptively simple: assemble ...

Meteor Mission is a classic space shooter built around a simple but timeless objective: defend yourself against relentless waves of incoming threats and keep firing until the unive...

Racter is one of the more unusual pieces of software from the early home-computer era: an experimental text-generation program designed to produce apparently original prose. Rather...

Remember ALF? The sarcastic alien who really had it in for cats? Well, in ALF: The First Adventure, you get to live the dream—or nightmare—of controlling the furry mena...

Project-X is a 1994 shoot 'em up that delivers intense arcade action with fast gameplay, powerful weapons, and waves of enemies determined to fill the screen. Players control a spa...

The Ancient Art of War at Sea takes the strategic ideas of its predecessor and moves them onto the water, where armies are replaced by fleets and the battlefield becomes considerab...

TomeNET is a multiplayer roguelike that takes the old-school Angband formula and turns it into something considerably more sociable, dangerous, and unpredictable. Instead of wander...

DuckTales: The Quest for Gold takes everyone’s favorite miserly duck, Scrooge McDuck, and sends him globetrotting for treasure. It’s part platformer, part management si...